1277
Further Reading
Brown, Julie K., Making Culture Visible, Amsterdam: Harwood
Academic Publishers, 2001.
Delaney, Michelle Anne, “The 1896 Washington Salon and Art
Photography,” American Art Review, vol. IX, no. 1 (February
1997): 110–115.
Haberstich, David E. “Photographs at the Smithsonian Institution:
A History.” Picturescope, (Summer 1985): 5–20.
O’Connor, Diane Vogt, (ed.), Guide to Photographic Collections
at the Smithsonian Institution, 4 vols, Washington, D.C.:
Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989–1995.
Smithsonian Institution Annual Reports. Washington, D.C.:
Smithsonian Institution, annual from 1846.
Wright, Helena, (Guest ed.), History of Photography, National
Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, vol.
24, no. 1 (Spring 2000). Most of the issue was devoted to col-
lections of the National Museum of American History.
SNAPSHOT PHOTOGRAPHY
Before it acquired the photographic meaning with which
it is now primarily associated, the word ‘snapshot’ was
originally a hunting or shooting term describing a shot
taken quickly, without careful aim or preparation. In
1850, for example, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine
wrote of intrepid African explorers pressing on ‘without
pausing in their route, even to take a snap-shot at a croco-
dile basking on a sand-spit’ (Blackwood’s Edinburgh
Magazine, August 1850, 231). During the 1850s, when
‘instantaneous’ photography fi rst became a technical
possibility, the term seems to have fi rst begun to be used
in a photographic context. Certainly, by 1859, a report of
a demonstration of Thomas Skaife’s Pistolgraph camera
in The British Journal of Photography describes how the
camera operator ‘was directed to snap his camera at the
skylight’ (BJP, 1 July 1859). In this case, of course, the
link with fi rearms is implicit in the name Skaife chose to
give his camera. However, the term was also open to a
broader interpretation. The following year, for example,
writing in The Photographic News, Sir John Herschel
referred to ‘the possibility of taking a photograph, as it
were, by a snap-shot—of securing a picture in a tenth
of a second of time’ (The Photographic News, 11 May
1860). On the basis of this remark, Herschel is usually
credited with coining the term ‘snapshot’ to describe a
photograph taken with a very brief exposure. However,
it is quite possible, that he was simply echoing what was
already current usage.
Herschel’s comments, whilst prophetic, did not
refl ect photography’s capability at the time. Although
‘instantaneous’ photographs were indeed produced dur-
ing the 1860s—often as stereoscopic pairs—it was not
until the introduction of much more sensitive gelatin
dry plates in the late 1870s that the practice became
widespread. Dry plates not only made possible the
pioneering chronophotography of Muybridge, Marey
and Anschutz but also profoundly affected the work of
amateur photographers by extending greatly the range
of subjects available to them. Their introduction also
had a radical effect on camera design. For the fi rst time,
exposures were now brief enough to allow cameras to
be held in the hand when taking a photograph. Freed
from the need for a tripod, a new generation of hand-
held box-form cameras appeared in the 1880s. Because
of their comparatively inconspicuous appearance and
speed of operation, which made ‘candid’ photography
possible for the fi rst time, these were popularly known
as ‘detective’ cameras—a term coined by Thomas Bolas
in 1881. Most were simple wooden boxes, sometimes
covered in leather or brown paper, so as to resemble bags
or parcels. Some were disguised as books or watches,
hidden in ties, hats or walking sticks or intended to be
worn, concealed beneath a waistcoat. Most ‘serious’
photographers rejected the term ‘detective’ since they
felt that it damaged both their individual reputations
and that of photography as a whole. They felt that it
encouraged the popular notion of the ‘camera fi end’
who took people’s photographs without their knowledge
or consent. Henry Peach Robinson, for one, considered
that: ‘There is something in the sound of the word so
mean, sneaking and unutterably low-down that it quite
choked me off having anything to do with the whole
concern’ (The Amateur Photographer, 27 March 1896,
270). Robinson’s preferred term was the less sensational
and more accurate ‘hand’ camera.
The idea of hidden cameras, of observing without
being observed and of being photographed unawares,
certainly caught the imagination of the general public.
The ubiquitous ‘camera fi end’ turns up frequently in
contemporary cartoons, newspapers and popular maga-
zines. In 1895, The Amateur Photographer magazine
(founded in 1884 and a manifestation of the rapid growth
of photography as a hobby) complained: ‘We are gradu-
ally beginning to think that when a man gets hold of a
hand-camera he loses some of his moral balance, and
he does things which otherwise he would not think of
doing; and unless he recognises this and pulls himself
up short, he degenerates into that worst of all types—the
snap-shot fi end’ (The Amateur Photographer, 19 July
1895, 34). Three years later, when hand cameras were
a little less of a novelty, The British Journal of Photog-
raphy, could still write: ‘One often hears and reads of
the ‘hand-camera fi end’ who ‘snap-shots’ (sic) ladies
as they emerge from their morning dip at the seaside, or
loving couples quietly reading under a shady rock’ (BJP,
23 December 1898, 818). By the 1890s, then, the term
‘snapshot,’ whilst still referring to a photograph taken
with a brief exposure, had acquired a second and more
widely-used meaning as a ‘candid’ photograph taken
without the subject’s knowledge or permission. The lure